Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2015

Unfriended only managed to score third place this week, but its studio is bragging it already has made back 16 times its production cost.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

You're a billion off. It made over $1,518,000,000 worldwide according to most estimates:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avengers11.htm

$623M domestic, then about $900M overseas.

 

I'll predict Star Wars VII will be a total bomb..........

......no, I'm kidding.

 

While it's clear the movie won't bomb in a traditional sense, it could be a financial disappointment. The expectations are so high for some movies - "Star Wars 7", "Avengers 2", etc. - that anything less than super-insane numbers could be viewed as a relative "bomb".

When the prequels came out, I viewed anything under $300 million as semi-flop territory. "Phantom Menace" made $400 million-plus due to basic momentum, but "Clones" showed the "backlash" against that movie, as it "only" made $302 million in the US.

"Clones" was the first - and so far only - "Star Wars" movie to fail to top the year-end box office in the US. It ended up in third place for 2002, $100 million behind "Spider-Man" and $37 million behind "LOTR: Two Towers".

It'll be very interesting to see where "Star Wars 7" ends up. I think the main impression is that the battle will be between it and "Avengers 2".

It sure feels weird to have a "Star Wars" movie come out in the winter!

 

Phantom Menace made $1.027 billion worldwide, so from their perspective the movie was extremely successful. Attack of the Clones "only" made $650M. Their general response to negative reviews was, "hey, we had a huge audience for the films and the people who bought tickets seemed to like it, and that's all we care about." (And I heard this said by both the director and the producer.)

I think at this point it's almost not possible for Avengers 2 and Star Wars 7 not to make at least a billion each. The only two questions that remain are, "how much more will they make?", and "will they suck or not?" I'll say for a fact that it won't be possible for either to flop on the order of Lone Ranger or John Carter.

I have great faith in Brad Bird. He's one of the rare "never made a bad film" directors out there, IMHO.

 

That's not funny.

Star Wars is gong to crush everything.

 

I'm booked to see Avengers 2 but I won't be seeing the new StarWars movie.

 

The other thing with Star Wars is that there is so much merchandising tied into it that probably generates millions all on its own. So even if the film itself isn't an insane smash hit, there's that to consider.

 

Well, they had a lot of toys from last year at wal-mart on discount section
and Guardians Of The Galaxy too.
The toy train is coming a slow stop.

 

Toys are just the tip of the iceberg. Have you seen how much Star Wars merchandise there is now? It's close to everything you could possibly think of.

 

I remember the 80's Starwars this dixicups, kids clothes, be sheets,
shoes wall paper etc.
At the end of day it's not same atmosphere as when those movies came out
And when I was kid back then.

 

until it's all gone and winds up on ebay or Amazon!

 

Indeed! an incredible fan-base for the franchise...

 

I'm a fan. I liked Mall Cop II, and my friend, who's a bigger fan of Kevin James than me, laughed so hard her stomach hurt afterwards. Of course, I watched all the King of Queens episodes on a DVD box set I got for a mere $25. Love that show.

 

I remember reading one review saying that Phanton Menace was the most critic-proof movie ever made. I suspect Episode VII has the same kind of power to draw crowds, no matter what the critics say. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

 

Still waiting for Jar Jar Binks toilet paper.

 

I found some on ebay denmark.

 

I have no issue with movies based on Disney theme parks and rides. The Pirates of the Caribbean series with Johnny Depp was pretty good. But rather than see Tomorrowland with George Clooney, I'd like to see Typhoon Lagoon or Splash Mountain starring Kate Upton.

 

Wow, a very interesting run down on Box Office Prophets with their predictions for May. They're pegging Avengers 2 at $230M this weekend, which is a huge, huge take:

http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=17532

They're also saying Mad Max: Thunder Road may be in trouble. They're predicting $60M total for America, and that's a huge disaster for a $200M movie. Something like this is gonna have to make north of $500M to break even.

I'm crossing my fingers that Tomorrowland is good, and that's ranked pretty highly. I'm a little dubious on Poltergeist, have no interest in San Andreas, and I'm also skeptical that the new Cameron Crowe movie Aloha can do well despite the presence of Bradley Cooper, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, and Bill Murray. I hope it's good, though, and I think Crowe almost always does very interesting movies, but commercially... I dunno.

 

Aloha could work as counter programming, it's nice to have at least a couple movies in the summer that don't feature robots, children's toy tie-ins and CGI cities being destroyed.

Poltergeist does not look good based on the previews I've seen. I fear it's going to be a nearly scene for scene rehash.

 

I'm interested in Aloha and Tomorrowland, but have no interest in Avengers 2 or Poltergeist.

 

Interesting thread. It took me an hour to read these 15 pages, but it was actually fun to see people reacting to some of the results. I'll definitely come back to it at the end of December to see who was to closest in their predictions.

 

I saw the "Mad Max: Thunder Road" trailer before "Avengers 2" and I don't think I'm going to pay to see it on the big screen but the cinematography looked insanely great

 

Poltergeist remake looks interesting. Don't think the remake could top the original, and it looks like they're using some modern horror cliche effects, but I'm interested.

 

I don’t get the Avengers thing at all. And it isn’t one of those “I don’t personally like it, so I’m going to fake being incredulous as to why anyone else might like it.” I acknowledge the popularity. I enjoy popcorn/action flicks as much as anyone. But that first Avengers movie was putting me to sleep. I’m apparently the anomaly.

It’s still pretty sad that a bunch of stuff on the list of upcoming films are still sequels, or remakes, or reboots, or something derived from something else (even “Tomorrowland” technically; although it appears to be an original story only borrowing a name). It’ll be interesting to see if there will be some sort of tipping point in however many years where a perceived backlash develops towards too many sequels and remakes. I would imagine a backlash towards the latter is far more likely. Someone is going to finally “reboot” something “too soon.”

Separate from that of course is the continuing issue that Hollywood doesn’t appear to want to fix, which is the “this film needs to make 5 trillion dollars to break even, even though the budget was only $100 million” problem. The original budgets are too big to begin with, and the amount needed to “make a profit” is exponentially higher. I said it in some other thread awhile back, but I continue to implore anyone working the industry to find some other work if you mind eventually being “downsized”, because working in an industry where the product’s “production costs” are inflated ($200 million let’s say), and where you need to pull three or four times that amount just to “break even”, it’s an industry doomed to at least sporadic failure and perhaps ultimately total decimation. I’m waiting to see the first film that literally pulls in $1 billion where someone at the studio has the balls to say it lost money (whether true or not).

It’s sad that a lot of the crap horror movies making the rounds the last few years actually have a more respectable cost/profit model. They’re often super cheap to make, so they can pull in $50 or $100 million and be a huge hit.